Techcentralstation.com has a column on why Democrats are supporting Big Hollywood by introducing bills like the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act. “Then there’s the loss of moral legitimacy: It’s hard to pose as friends of the little guy against Big Business when you’re taking money from Big Business while taking long-established rights away from the little guy. (Scott Harshbarger of Common Cause calls this move ‘a shocking fire sale.’)”

Anonymous Reader writes: “portazero has a Steve Gibson interview about security, Internet, why he’s using FreeBSD instad of Linux.”

“The Open Source Education Foundation has announced their Free Curricula License.” More at seul.org.

“Microsoft Corporation asked
a Seattle Court to reconsider a strongly-worded ruling upholding
Lindows.com’s use of the terms “Lindows.com” and “LindowsOS.”

The court’s favorable ruling, issued on March 15, 2002, cites that
“Microsoft has raised serious questions about the validity of its
[Windows] trademark.”

The suit, filed by Microsoft in December of 2001,
         sought to stop Lindows.com, a 30-person company that offers a
         Linux-based operating system, which runs popular Windows-based
         programs, from branding itself as Lindows.com. The March 15, 2002
         ruling can be read, in its entirety, at www.lindows.com/opposition.

         The Microsoft Corporation asked the court, in a 19-page document, to
         reconsider the ruling stating that the court reached "an incorrect
         result." Microsoft's motion for reconsideration can be read at
         www.lindows.com/opposition.

         Judge John C. Coughenour found in the preliminary injunction ruling
         that Microsoft had not shown that Lindows.com should be prevented from
         using the names Lindows.com and LindowsOS as part of their business,
         stating that, "The Court finds that Lindows.com has met its burden of
         proof in rebutting the validity of the Windows trademark."

         "Lindows.com supporters submitted thousands of references to windows
         spanning the last 20 years," said Michael Robertson, Chief Executive
         Officer of Lindows.com. "They helped build a strong foundation which
         the Judge relied on in his initial ruling. Microsoft's hundreds of
         attorneys and billions of dollars can't rewrite history and the fact
         that Windows is a generic term."

         "Microsoft's actions are attempts to belabor the outcome and drag our
         company through a lengthy and costly legal battle. We're looking
         forward to getting this issue in front of a jury and getting resolution
         in a manner which allows us to put a competitor on the store shelf
         which will cost a third or less of Microsoft's offerings," Robertson
         added.

         The Judge can deny the reconsideration motion or ask Lindows.com to
         file a legal brief in response. Microsoft has until April 15th to file
         an appeal on the Judge's initial ruling. The appeal, if filed, would be
         heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

         Lindows.com has released a Sneak Preview of LindowsOS to a select group
         of Insiders (www.lindows.cominsider). The Sneak Preview is not a fully
         completed product, but showcases many of the unique features such as a
         "Friendly-Install" alongside an existing Microsoft Windows operating
         system, a streamlined installation process which requires minimal
         computer knowledge, and the ability to run popular Windows-based
         programs. Version 1.0 will go on sale later this year for one-third of
         the cost of a comparable Microsoft offering. For more information see
         www.lindows.com/products.

         To receive Lindows.com press releases via email signup at
         www.lindows.com/mailing.

         About Lindows.com, Inc.

         Lindows.com is a consumer company that brings choice to computer users.
         Lindows.com, Inc. uses the latest technology to create affordable,
         stable, user-friendly products. Lindows.com, Inc. was started by
         Michael Robertson, founder and former CEO of MP3.com. At the core of
         Lindows.com is a new operating system called LindowsOS, a modern,
         affordable, easy-to-use operating system with the ability to run both
         Microsoft Windows and Linux® software.

Maninder Bali writes: “The Indic-Fonts-HOWTO has been written to help you setup your Linux box to use UTF-8 encoding for using various Indic scripts. I have tested the IndiX system on Exodus GNU/Linux, RedHat Linux, and Mandrake Linux.
“

Rainer Manns writes: “Here’s a website to find contacts, products and applications. Visit free-it.org.“

DocTomoe writes: “Yellow Dog Linux is currently the only PowerPC distribution that does not exist for other platforms. Although YDL is based on RedHat, it’s a unique distribution and it’s understandable that each release of YDL is followed with great interest by the PowerPC Linux community. iMacLinux.net has reviewed their latest release, version 2.2, which started shipping last week.”

– by Tina Gasperson –
This is for people who want to learn the basics of Linux at home, on the
Internet. You don’t have to be a “learn all alone” kind of person to do it this
way — there’s plenty of human help out there. These three venues offer current, interactive,
real-life Linux help for real people.Newchix

The Newchix
mailing list is an offshoot of the popular LinuxChix community built around
female Linux users. There is no set curriculum or structure to this beginner’s
forum — just bring your questions and join in. The LinuxChix lists have a
reputation for polite repartee that is rare in tech discussions of any kind, and
the Newchix list is no exception. All questions are welcomed and treated with
care by experienced and not-so-experienced members of the list. The membership
is mostly female, but men are welcome.

List traffic is moderate but growing. Previous topics have included “firewalls,”
“Mandrake install problem,” “cannot load desktop manager,” “baud and bps,” “does
Linux crash?” “about downloading Red Hat,” and “PCMCIA card config.”

MandrakeUser.org

Obviously, this is a Mandrake-specific site. But because it is geared to
beginners, go ahead, pick up a copy of Mandrake and get busy installing. This is the best site out there for current docs and tutorials. I’ve used this site extensively to find out
which files to edit, how to edit them, what programs I need to install and when; and also to learn about .rpm packages and the dependency game.

There’s no “step-by-step” installation guide here, but that’s one of the nice
things about Mandrake (and many of the other distributions) — the process is so
automated you won’t need that kind of help. If you get stuck on X configuration,
you will find help for that here.

A nice feature is the interactive discussion forum, which in itself serves as a
nice, big archive of solutions. You should search the current posts before you
ask your question, because it is likely someone else has had the same problem
you’re having.

Basic Linux Training

Henry White and Anita Lewis run this low-key mailing list and Web site
that is the best free program on the ‘Net, dedicated to the Linux newbie who is
willing to do some studying to learn the basics. They’re so low-key they
didn’t want us to give them too much publicity because “idle-curiosity seekers”
take up too much bandwidth, according to Henry White, and he pays for that
out of his own pocket. So, no visiting unless you’re a serious newbie who’s
ready to learn!

They’re tolerant of all questions that come up on the “BLT” list, and don’t
allow flaming or “RTFM”
comments. But don’t expect to get your hand held too much — after all, this is
Linux, and you have to be ready to read up.

Potential students should be
prepared to wait; the class size is limited and there’s usually a backlog of
registrants, says White. Once you’re in, you’ll get two or three lessons at a
time to work through on your own. The mailing list is for lesson-related
questions or other difficulties.

From the site: “Basic Linux Training is a
brief, introductory level course written specifically for those coming from a
DOS/Windows background, without any knowledge of Unix or programming. (Those
coming from Apple/Mac are welcome and should get a lot out of this course
despite the orientation. Just be aware that Mac users have always been rare on
the mailing list so you’ll almost certainly have to supplement this course with
other Mac users who have Linux installed.) The course is designed to be used
with virtually any introductory Linux textbook, and is vendor and distribution
neutral.”

– By Telsa Gwynn –
Anyone can file a bug on anything: The difficult part is
knowing how to write the report and where to send it. For some reason, people
are wary about entering trivial bugs or typos in things users can see (dialogue
boxes and docs for example) if they know there are worse bugs to
fix. But they are easy to fix: People just have to know they exist.Bug-reporting is a learning curve, and it does take time at first,
but then it gets faster and faster until it’s routine. You get to pick
things up about what might be relevant, and how to search different
bug-trackers effectively, and where developers think an obvious
place to put FAQs and bug report hints are.

I think the biggest thing is to stop every time you notice
something odd and look at it there and then. If I meet a bug
in a new program and think “I’ll just finish this and then
go back to that bug,” I tend not to be able to find it again.

Take notes: whether on paper, on the computer, or into a
tape-recorder. Don’t do it on the computer if it’s an X or kernel
hang or crash: unless you have auto-save on in your editor you’ll
lose your notes. A separate machine is okay though. If there’s
an error message, copy it precisely. If it’s horrendously long
and you have a digital camera, take a photo and stick the pic on
the Web. (I’ve seen kernel oopses treated like this.)

If your screensaver or apm is going to kick in before you can copy half
a screen of X crash errors, read the numbers into a tape recorder
slowly and then play it back and type it in at your leisure. If it’s
something at the console and isn’t a crash, use “script” to
capture exactly what you typed and what spewed out. Script is
brilliant for saving stack traces from gdb if you don’t have
cut and paste handy, too.

Particularly, write down exactly what you did. “How to reproduce” is
often the most important bit, especially if some kind maintainer makes
a patch and you apply it and try to test the fix and think, “Now, how
did I get it to do that again?”

Then, figuring out what exactly broke is the next big one, and that
can be a pig. Because UNIX is so full of lots of little programs
calling different ones to do different bits, what you start is not
always what’s actually breaking: Sometimes it’s a library the
program is using and sometimes it’s even more arcane. A really
good (or bad, depending on your point of view) example was the
time I wrote a quick rot13 script using the “tr” command. The
script broke in peculiar ways. The culprit was not exactly obvious.
Earlier, I had changed my locale to en_GB. Changing your locale that
way changes the sort order (LC_COLLATE). And the way I had used tr
relied on the sort order being “C” rather than “en_GB”. Uurgh. I was
fairly proud that I figured that out before Alan did.

It’s worth checking the FAQ, /usr/(share/)doc/packagename/README, and
the
already-open bugs against the package. I wrote a very long screed
about
“docs wrong” for one app a while back, checked bugzilla before
entering
it, and someone else had already done it for me. So I just added
some extra to that one.

And file the bug. Add something about “what more information do you
need?” because it’s very possible there is more: I have become
used to attaching XF86Configs, the output of lspci -vv, my .gtkrc
and so on. Developers differ here: RH’s bugzilla tends to be full
of “Please run this command and attach the results,” but some other
people give responses of, “Do you have the foo module and was
poo compiled with — plop?” which is not always something I can answer.

The other thing to remember is that developers are human, too.
Slagging off the package and the character of the person who wrote
it with copious ad hominem attacks is not going to get your bug
looked at first. Sadly, there are the occasional folk who treat
bug-trackers as a way to flame people. This isn’t fun and it’s
not fair on the people going through the bugs, who are not necessarily
going to be the person who wrote it in the first place. Saying “I am
not
going to use this any more” isn’t a good idea either: Why fix it if
the reporter is not going to test the fix?

Of course, it works both ways. Developer responses of, “Don’t do
that, then,” “This is not a bug,” or just silence are not at
all encouraging. And blaming users for, “You used the wrong
compiler,” when the user just shoved a CD in is not fair. There
are some apps I won’t file bugs on these days because I’m scared
of the response I’ll get from certain people.

Wow, I bet I put everyone off now. If you’re not sure where
bugs go, I have a partial
list of bug-trackers I use on my Web site: I’m thinking of turning it into
something more complete. If I didn’t put people off, I suppose the advice is to
find a package you like — or that you want to learn about, because
it’s often people who haven’t subconsciously learned workarounds
who find the real howlers. And then just read the man page, try
it with different versions of options, feed it obvious stuff by
extrapolation of, “Well, if this works, then this should … oops.”

Prentice Hall PTR today announced the
publication of Linux Administration Handbook, written by world-renowned UNIX
experts Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder and Trent R. Hein. The LINUX
Administration Handbook provides the breadth and depth of material necessary
to effectively use Linux in real-world business environments. Using the
practical approach of their best-selling UNIX System Administration Handbook
(Prentice Hall PTR, 1988, 1995, 2001), the authors address administration
challenges in the three most popular and representative distributions of the
Linux community: Red Hat 7.2, SuSE 7.3 and Debian 3.0.

“Linux systems are just as functional, secure, and reliable as their
proprietary counterparts,” wrote Linus Torvalds in the foreword. Torvalds,
the creator of Linux, continued, “Thanks to the ongoing efforts of its
thousands of developers, Linux is more ready than ever for deployment at the
frontlines of the real world. The authors of this book know that terrain
well, and I am happy to leave you in their most capable hands.”

Written for both the novice administrator and as a trustworthy reference for
the seasoned professional, Linux Administration Handbook features war
stories and hard-won insights, examining how Linux systems behave in
real-world environments. The authors cover difficult tasks in all their
complexity including DNS configuration, networking, sendmail configuration,
security management, kernel building, performance analysis and routing.

The authors divide the book into three large sections: Basic Administration,
Networking and Bunch o’ Stuff. Basic Administration provides a broad
overview of Linux from a system administrator’s perspective while the
Networking section describes the protocols used on Linux systems and the
techniques used to set up, extend and maintain networks. Finally, Bunch o’
Stuff includes a variety of supplemental information including advice on
topics ranging from hardware maintenance to the politics of running a Linux
installation. Each chapter is followed by a set of practice exercises
ranging from brief easy exercises to project-sized exercises.

About the authors…

Evi Nemeth

Since retiring from the computer science facility at the University of
Colorado, where she spent close to twenty years, Evi Nemeth continues to
spend time at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis
(CAIDA), at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. She remains actively
involved with the USENIX Association as a course instructor.

Nemeth has spent the better part of her professional career involved in a
number of professional activities, including the Internet Engineering Task
Force and teaching tutorials for the Usenix Association, Uniforum, SANS,
FedUnix, AUUG (Australia), NLUUG, (Netherlands), NUUG (Norway), Europen
(Europe), and other UNIX related organizations.

Widely recognized as an expert in the UNIX/Linux world, Nemeth has been
published in dozens of publications and has won a wide range of awards,
including the USENIX/LISA Lifetime Achievement Award and a “Top 25 Women on
the Web” award.

Currently, Nemeth is exploring the Caribbean on her 40-foot sailboat named
Wonderland.

Garth Snyder

Garth Snyder has worked at NeXT and Sun Microsystems and holds a degree in
electrical engineering from Swarthmore College. He is currently an MD/MBA
candidate at the University of Rochester.

Trent R. Hein

Trent R. Hein is Applied Trust Engineering’s co-founder, president and CEO.
Hein was named as a “Major Contributor” on the Lifetime Achievement Award
which was presented to UC Berkeley’s Computer Systems Research Group by the
USENIX Association. He was also one of three engineers hired at Berkeley
Software Design, Inc., developers of the much-acclaimed BSD/OS Internet
server operating system.

Hein is a frequent speaker at technical conferences and has authored
numerous white papers and articles for leading technology publications.
Hein holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Colorado.

Linux Administration Handbook by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder and Trent R. Hein.
(Prentice Hall PTR 2002. 890 pp. ISBN: 0-13-008466-2. $49.99 US.)